One day I’m sat here minding my own business, the next I’ve agreed to do something stupid. This time the stupid thing is the A to Z Challenge and this is my first post.
I’m going to try and theme my posts in a kind of loose way thus allowing myself to make things a little easier by picking something I know about. And what theme is that?
Procrastination.
I know all about procrastination and feel sure I can write it about it for the 26 days of April that we’re allotted this year. After all I have years of experience at avoiding the writing of things and it feels mean to not share that knowledge with you.
A is for Art
My most recent method of procrastination appears to be making art. I make it with pencils, paints and pastels. Am I any good? Of course I am. Look.
Doesn’t that just scream, Picasso, at you in a loud foreign accent? Can’t you feel the heat coming from the ultra realistic sun? I know I can, although I am off my tits on painkillers, so you should probably, you know, ignore stuff…
Anyway, art is a great way of avoiding writing while at the same time still being creative. This is a good thing, for even when the words won’t flow, you can still get something useful out of the mush you call a brain. You just have to hit it in the right way.
Painting and drawing does just that for me. And while I may not be very good at it, I don’t care. It makes me smile, it makes me laugh out loud, and it makes me forget the mess my writing is making. And that’s the important thing.
I highly recommend doing arty stuff as a nice way to relax. And don’t come at me with that, “Oh I can’t even draw a straight line,” crap. Drawing and painting isn’t about being good, it’s about having fun. You didn’t give a shit when you were a kid did you? So why start now?
The trick to good drawing is to have fun and not care. I find that when I’m trying to draw a “realistic representation” of a thing or person, it all goes to shit and leaves me feeling depressed because I really can’t draw or paint and nothing looks like it should. But when I’m just messing about without a care with the oil pastels, or coloured pencils, the fun returns and it all comes together.
Get a pencil, get some paper, get some crayons if you like, and draw something. You might find that the distraction suddenly helps you to fill in that massive plot hole you’ve been struggling with. You might draw the feeling of a character that helps you to understand their place in your story a little better. Or it might just make you laugh.
It’s win/win.
Join me tomorrow as I try to make you believe I’ve planned something for the letter B in this A to Z Challenge.
Featured in Superlative 2020: New Beginnings
Great post! And so true – I used to draw just for fun – why don’t I now? Time to get back to having fun!
If you’re not having fun in the things you do, you’re doing it wrong.
Hooray for art! Hooray for procrast… Can’t be arsed with the rest of the comment. Maybe tomorrow…
I see what you did there.
I can draw a face and a plant pot with a flower it it.
After that I’m not much use… BUT I love to steal colouring books from small children and very carefully colour inside the lines. I do have fun doing that.
Until angry parents come looking for me!
Colouring is good. My mum still gets a colouring book and pens for Christmas.
The sun reminds me of a fried egg, without the white part. The tree is wonderfully wonderful.
Art. Yes. “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” I didn’t think that up. Aristotle did.
Though I would have if I’d been around then.
I heard that Aristotle heard it from a bloke down the market.
Tomorrow I’m buying crayons 🙂
I insist upon it. Crayons for all!
Great post – and thank you for including the sun in your drawing – we’ve quite forgotten what it looks like in this part of the world 🙂
Can’t stand the sun, so this voodoo drawing is my way of controlling it.
I can draw flowers in a vase,that is all.
When I was at school, all I could draw was faces obscured by rubber plants. My teacher accused me of production line art.
Playing is good. I stole an idea from a sample of a book on Amazon and now look for patterns that look like other things as a starting point.
Example: I recently drew a dinosaur that started off as the shape of some water that had spilled on my draining board.